Mkhaya Game Reserve is a

protected area Protected areas or conservation areas are locations which receive protection because of their recognized natural or cultural values. Protected areas are those areas in which human presence or the exploitation of natural resources (e.g. firewood ...

Eswatini Eswatini, formally the Kingdom of Eswatini, also known by its former official names Swaziland and the Kingdom of Swaziland, is a landlocked country in Southern Africa. It is bordered by South Africa on all sides except the northeast, where i ...

. It is located along the

MR8 road The MR8 road is a major highway of Eswatini. Along with the MR3 and MR7 roads it is considered to form the "backbone of Eswatini's internal transport system." It connects the MR3 road east of Manzini at with Lavumisa/Golela Golela is a borde ...

Characteristics

The game reserve is situated in

lowveld Veld ( or , Afrikaans and Dutch: ''veld'', field), also spelled veldt, is a type of wide-open, rural landscape in Southern Africa. Particularly, it is a flat area covered in grass or low scrub, especially in the countries of South Africa, ...

wilderness in the southeast of Eswatini and is made up of acacia-dominated

thornveld Veld ( or , Afrikaans and Dutch: ''veld'', field), also spelled veldt, is a type of wide-open, rural landscape in Southern Africa. Particularly, it is a flat area covered in grass or low scrub, especially in the countries of South Africa, ...

in the south and broadleaf

sandveld Veld ( or , Afrikaans language, Afrikaans and Dutch language, Dutch: ''veld'', field), also spelled veldt, is a type of wide-open, rural landscape in Southern Africa. Particularly, it is a flat area covered in grass or low scrubland, scrub, ...

in the north. The reserve has many dry riverbeds, is dotted with waterholes and has a network of game-viewing roads. Mkhaya Game Reserve is named after the knobthorn tree which is known as ''mkhaya'' in

siSwati Swazi or siSwati is a Bantu language of the Nguni group spoken in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland) and South Africa by the Swati people. The number of speakers is estimated to be in the region of 4.7 million including first and second langua ...

. Mkhaya is staffed and patrolled entirely by local

Swazi people The Swati or Swazi ( Swati: ''Emaswati'', singular ''Liswati'') are a Bantu ethnic group native to Southern Africa, inhabiting Eswatini, a sovereign kingdom in Southern Africa, and South Africa's Mpumalanga province. EmaSwati are part of the ...

. All travel within the reserve is guided and requires pre-booking. The reserve is self-financed solely through visitor revenues.

Fauna

The game reserve was established in 1979 to save

Nguni cattle The Nguni is a cattle breed indigenous to Southern Africa. A hybrid of different Indian and later European cattle breeds, they were introduced by pastoralist tribes ancestral to modern Nguni people to Southern Africa during their migration from t ...

, which were close to extinction, and has gone on to include other endangered species such as the

black Black is a color that results from the absence or complete absorption of visible light. It is an achromatic color, without chroma, like white and grey. It is often used symbolically or figuratively to represent darkness.Eva Heller, ''P ...

and

white rhino The white rhinoceros, also known as the white rhino or square-lipped rhinoceros (''Ceratotherium simum''), is the largest extant species of rhinoceros and the most Sociality, social of all rhino species, characterized by its wide mouth adapted f ...

hippopotamus The hippopotamus (''Hippopotamus amphibius;'' ; : hippopotamuses), often shortened to hippo (: hippos), further qualified as the common hippopotamus, Nile hippopotamus and river hippopotamus, is a large semiaquatic mammal native to sub-Sahar ...

pods, roan antelope,

sable antelope The sable antelope (''Hippotragus niger'') is a large antelope which inhabits wooded savanna in East and Southern Africa, from the south of Kenya to South Africa, with a separated population in Angola. Taxonomy The sable antelope shares the genu ...

tsessebe The common tsessebe or sassaby (''Damaliscus lunatus lunatus'') is the southern, nominate subspecies of ''Damaliscus lunatus'', although some authorities have recognised it as an independent species. It is most closely related to the Bangweulu t ...

elephant Elephants are the largest living land animals. Three living species are currently recognised: the African bush elephant ('' Loxodonta africana''), the African forest elephant (''L. cyclotis''), and the Asian elephant ('' Elephas maximus ...

and

Cape buffalo The African buffalo (''Syncerus caffer)'' is a large sub-Saharan African bovine. The adult African buffalo's horns are its characteristic feature: they have fused bases, forming a continuous bone shield across the top of the head, referred to ...

herds. Birds of note include

Narina trogon __NOTOC__ The Narina trogon (''Apaloderma narina'') is a largely green and red, medium-sized (32–34 cm long), bird of the family Trogonidae. It is native to forests and woodlands of the Afrotropics. Though it is the most widespread and cat ...

purple-crested turaco The purple-crested turaco (''Gallirex porphyreolophus'') or, in South Africa, the purple-crested loerie, (Khurukhuru in the Luvenḓa (Venḓa) language is a species of bird in the clade Turaco with an unresolved phylogenetic placement. Initial a ...

, grey-headed bush-shrike,

gorgeous bushshrike The gorgeous bushshrike (''Telophorus viridis'') is a species of bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying ...

and pygmy kingfisher. Trials were started in 2009 to find a financially viable and humane method to control the elephant population by performing vasectomies on some bull elephants.

References

{{Protected areas of Swaziland Protected areas of Eswatini